The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

rails that the train could pass over

without touching, but to lie there was no joke! Kolya maintained

stoutly that he would. At first they laughed at him, called him a

little liar, a braggart, but that only egged him on. What piqued him

most was that these boys of fifteen turned up their noses at him too

superciliously, and were at first disposed to treat him as “a small

boy,” not fit to associate with them, and that was an unendurable

insult. And so it was resolved to go in the evening, half a mile

from the station, so that the train might have time to get up full

speed after leaving the station The boys assembled. It was a

pitch-dark night without a moon. At the time fixed, Kolya lay down

between the rails. The five others who had taken the bet waited

among the bushes below the embankment, their hearts beating with

suspense, which was followed by alarm and remorse. At last they

heard in the distance the rumble of the train leaving the station. Two

red lights gleamed out of the darkness; the monster roared as it

approached.

 

“Run, run away from the rails,” the boys cried to Kolya from the

bushes, breathless with terror. But it was too late: the train

darted up and flew past. The boys rushed to Kolya. He lay without

moving. They began pulling at him, lifting him up. He suddenly got

up and walked away without a word. Then he explained that he had

lain there as though he were insensible to frighten them, but the fact

was that he really had lost consciousness, as he confessed long

after to his mother. In this way his reputation as “a desperate

character,” was established for ever. He returned home to the

station as white as a sheet. Next day he had a slight attack of

nervous fever, but he was in high spirits and well pleased with

himself. The incident did not become known at once, but when they came

back to the town it penetrated to the school and even reached the ears

of the masters. But then Kolya’s mother hastened to entreat the

masters on her boy’s behalf, and in the end Dardanelov, a respected

and influential teacher, exerted himself in his favour, and the affair

was ignored.

 

Dardanelov was a middle-aged bachelor, who had been passionately

in love with Madame Krassotkin for many years past, and had once

already, about a year previously, ventured, trembling with fear and

the delicacy of his sentiments, to offer her most respectfully his

hand in marriage. But she refused him resolutely, feeling that to

accept him would be an act of treachery to her son, though

Dardanelov had, to judge from certain mysterious symptoms, reason

for believing that he was not an object of aversion to the charming

but too chaste and tender-hearted widow. Kolya’s mad prank seemed to

have broken the ice, and Dardanelov was rewarded for his

intercession by a suggestion of hope. The suggestion, it is true,

was a faint one, but then Dardanelov was such a paragon of purity

and delicacy that it was enough for the time being to make him

perfectly happy. He was fond of the boy, though he would have felt

it beneath him to try and win him over, and was severe and strict with

him in class. Kolya, too, kept him at a respectful distance. He

learned his lessons perfectly; he was second in his class, was

reserved with Dardanelov, and the whole class firmly believed that

Kolya was so good at universal history that he could “beat” even

Dardanelov. Kolya did indeed ask him the question, “Who founded Troy?”

to which Dardanelov had made a very vague reply, referring to the

movements and migrations of races, to the remoteness of the period, to

the mythical legends. But the question, “Who had founded Troy?” that

is, what individuals, he could not answer, and even for some reason

regarded the question as idle and frivolous. But the boys remained

convinced that Dardanelov did not know who founded Troy. Kolya had

read of the founders of Troy in Smaragdov, whose history was among the

books in his father’s bookcase. In the end all the boys became

interested in the question, who it was that had founded Troy, but

Krassotkin would not tell his secret, and his reputation for knowledge

remained unshaken.

 

After the incident on the railway a certain change came over

Kolya’s attitude to his mother. When Anna Fyodorovna (Madame

Krassotkin) heard of her son’s exploit, she almost went out of her

mind with horror. She had such terrible attacks of hysterics,

lasting with intervals for several days, that Kolya, seriously alarmed

at last, promised on his honour that such pranks should never be

repeated. He swore on his knees before the holy image, and swore by

the memory of his father, at Madame Krassotkin’s instance, and the

“manly” Kolya burst into tears like a boy of six. And all that day the

mother and son were constantly rushing into each other’s arms sobbing.

Next day Kolya woke up as “unfeeling” as before, but he had become

more silent, more modest, sterner, and more thoughtful.

 

Six weeks later, it is true, he got into another scrape, which

even brought his name to the ears of our Justice of the Peace, but

it was a scrape of quite another kind, amusing, foolish, and he did

not, as it turned out, take the leading part in it, but was only

implicated in it. But of this later. His mother still fretted and

trembled, but the more uneasy she became, the greater were the hopes

of Dardanelov. It must be noted that Kolya understood and divined what

was in Dardanelov’s heart and, of course, despised him profoundly

for his “feelings”; he had in the past been so tactless as to show

this contempt before his mother, hinting vaguely that he knew what

Dardanelov was after. But from the time of the railway incident his

behaviour in this respect also was changed; he did not allow himself

the remotest allusion to the subject and began to speak more

respectfully of Dardanelov before his mother, which the sensitive

woman at once appreciated with boundless gratitude. But at the

slightest mention of Dardanelov by a visitor in Kolya’s presence,

she would flush as pink as a rose. At such moments Kolya would

either stare out of the window scowling, or would investigate the

state of his boots, or would shout angrily for “Perezvon,” the big,

shaggy, mangy dog, which he had picked up a month before, brought

home, and kept for some reason secretly indoors, not showing him to

any of his schoolfellows. He bullied him frightfully, teaching him all

sorts of tricks, so that the poor dog howled for him whenever he was

absent at school, and when he came in, whined with delight, rushed

about as if he were crazy, begged, lay down on the ground pretending

to be dead, and so on; in fact, showed all the tricks he had taught

him, not at the word of command, but simply from the zeal of his

excited and grateful heart.

 

I have forgotten, by the way, to mention that Kolya Krassotkin was

the boy stabbed with a penknife by the boy already known to the reader

as the son of Captain Snegiryov. Ilusha had been defending his

father when the schoolboys jeered at him, shouting the nickname

“wisp of tow.”